10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

A
pedestrian holding his mobile phone is reflected on an electronic
board showing the graph of the recent fluctuations of Japan's
Nikkei average outside a brokerage in Tokyo February 5,
2014.REUTERS/Yuya
Shino

Good morning. Here's what you need to know.

— The ECB elected to leave
its benchmark refinancing rate unchanged at 0.25% today.
The euro is trading lower against the dollar in the wake of the
announcement. The press conference with ECB president Mario
Draghi at 8:30 AM ET will likely center on the Bank's options for
further liquidity provisioning in the eurozone should the outlook
deteriorate further.

— Shares of GM are
taking a hit in pre-market trading following the release of
quarterly earnings results that missed on the top and bottom
lines. The company said the earnings miss was largely
because of restructuring costs, but also because of higher
taxes.

— The Bank of England elected today to leave its benchmark policy
interest rate unchanged at 0.5% and maintained the target for its
asset purchase program at £375 billion. The pound is
strengthening a bit against the dollar and the euro in the wake
of the announcement.

— S&P 500 futures are higher and U.S. Treasury note
futures are lower after a day in the red for both yesterday. Gold
is also gaining, while the dollar is up slightly against the euro
and down slightly against the yen. European equity indices are
rallying after a mixed session in Asia — the Japanese Nikkei 225
closed down 0.2% while the Hong Kong Hang Seng advanced
0.7%.

— Sony is
selling its personal computers businessand spinning off its TV business into a
separate unit, and will cut 5,000 jobs worldwide this year. The
company plans to make 100 billion yen per year of cost cuts under
its new restructuring plan.

— Twitter shares are
down more than 20% in pre-market trading following the
release of its first quarterly earnings statement since its
initial public offering. Although the company reported earnings
of $0.02 per share — above analysts' consensus estimate of a loss
of $0.02 per share — and revenues came in at $242.7
million (also above expectations), investors
honed in on weak user growth. Monthly active users were 241
million, up only 9 million from the previous quarter.

— Shares of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters are up over 40% in
pre-market trading following the announcement that Coca-Cola will
take a $1.25 billion, 10% stake in the company. The two will work
on a cold beverage for the Keurig device. Shares of competitor
SodaStream, meanwhile, are down more than 8% in pre-market
trading.

— German factory orders unexpectedly dropped 0.5% from the
previous month in December after rising 2.4% on November.
Economists were looking for a 0.2% gain. On a work-day adjusted
year-over-year basis, orders were up 6.0%, down from 7.2% in
November and below expectations of a 6.3% advance.

— Weekly initial claims figures are due out at 8:30 AM ET.
Economists predict initial claims fell to 335,000 in the week
ended February 1 from 348,000 the week before. Continuing claims
are expected to have risen slightly top 2.998 million in the week
ended January 25 from 2.991 million in the previous week.
Follow the release LIVE »

— Monthly U.S. trade data are also released at 8:30. Economists
predict the trade deficit widened to $36.0 billion in December
from $34.3 billion in November. Another economic data release of interest
out at 8:30 — though not market-moving — is fourth quarter
nonfarm productivity and unit labor costs. Economists predict
nonfarm productivity growth slowed to 2.8% in Q4 from 3.0% in Q3.
Unit labor costs are expected to have fallen 0.7% in Q4 after
falling 1.4% in Q3.Follow all of the data
LIVE on Business Insider »